Circle November 18 on the schedule and get ready for Charlotte on Tuesday. That is about all Orlando can take out of tonight's crushing loss to Oklahoma City at the Ford Center. The Thunder took a close game in the second quarter and turned it into a rout, running and shooting circles around a short-handed Magic team for a 102-74 win.
The score, for once, is as bad as the game indicated.
Oklahoma City abused Orlando on offense, playing much the same way Orlando is accustomed to playing offensively. The Thunder hit a barrage of 3-pointers behind Russell Westbrook and Thabo Sefolosha before Kevin Durant took over in taking to the basket.
That formula persisted throughout the rest of the game as the Magic could not figure out how to make any baskets. And I mean ANY baskets.
Orlando had a 25-23 lead after one quarter and were outscored 79-49 in the next 36 minutes, failing to score 20 points in the final three quarters. This was a close game at one point, but the Magic just could not get into a flow offensively and the they continued to struggle defensively.
Clearly their offense cannot carry them all the way to victories on every night. The defense has to show up and play well on nights when shots do not fall.
Orlando was without Ryan Anderson and Vince Carter. And for the first time all season it certainly mattered. The Magic sorely missed their outside shooting ability as it was on Dwight Howard's shoulders to carry the team. He did fine in the first half, scoring 15, but he had only five points the rest of the way when fouls and frustration caught up with him.
No one else could really score as JJ Redick went cold going 2 for 11 from the field and Jameer Nelson, trying as hard as he could, only managed 10 points on 4-for-10 shooting. Orlando shot just 3 for 16 from beyond the arc.
On the other side, Oklahoma City had four players in double figures, led by Kevin Durant's 28, and hit 9 of its 16 3-point attempts after coming into the game shooting near 35 percent from beyond the arc. The defense struggled throughout the night containing Durant and the shooters and part of that can be attributed to a lack of perimeter depth. Part of it to something else.
This is the kind of game where everything went wrong and it affected every aspect of the game.
The bottom line though, is the defense has to improve. The Magic are not the same defensive team as they were last year. Part of that is fact Carter is not 100 percent. Part of it is something else. Tough for me to figure out since my free NBA League Pass ran out last week.
I do not want to be Charlotte on Tuesday night because Orlando tends to have very good games after performances like these. But it has been a long time since the Magic have been outplayed like this, and it has been a long time since they have given up on a game like they did tonight.
Either way, Stan Van Gundy will be recanting his statements from Tuesday night after the loss to the Pistons... this is the worst game the Magic have played since the 2003-04 21-61 season. Something needs to change.
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